How AI is Empowering the Dealership BDC, Live from ASOTU Con 2026
Voice AI has flooded automotive retail, and on the surface most providers look identical. Beneath the surface, the differences decide whether the technology actually drives revenue or just frustrates your customers.
In this session from the AI Summit at ASOTU Con 2026, Mia's VP of Sales team breaks down what dealerships really get from agentic voice AI
- Full BDC coverage across sales, service, and reception
- The back-end work that turns a booked appointment into real operational value
- Why speed to lead is the whole game.
They also share three quick tests for vetting an AI provider, and the mindset shift that separates dealers who succeed with AI from those who don't.
Watch the full panel below, or read the complete transcript underneath.
Full interview transcript
Scott Traylor: Okay full bellies, uh we're gonna jump into this so we can um honor the time that we have with you today. My name is Scott Traylor, this is Thuy. We are VP of Sales collectively for Mia and we usually start these conversations by just letting everybody in the room know this fact: We're not tech people.
Yes, we work for an AI company, but I'm a dealer for 20 years. And I got to partner with these guys and we started working on this technology that we're going to walk you through and it has turned into something that's honestly changed my life.
And I'm going to share this with you today but I want to share a few things. One is exactly what we do. Secondly... Thank you. First I'm going to share with you exactly what we do. Then I'm going to share with you some examples of what we do with clients. And then before we finish up today Thuy and I are going to educate you on how to choose an AI partner. Because this is important guys what I'm about to say.
There's a lot of AI, there's a lot of opportunities in here to partner with a lot of different AI firms. And on the surface, they truly look alike. But when you get beneath the surface you realize a lot of them are not the same.
So we're going to get into that before we leave you today and give you some really good knowledge on how to decide who should I partner with.
But let me start. Mia is about 3 years old. To date we've cleared 3 million calls. 3 million conversations with clients nationwide. Those 3 million conversations have booked over 300,000 appointments for our clients. And because of 300,000 appointments that's tens of millions of dollars that we've generated for our clients nationwide.
We again started 3 years ago, but today we have 85 employees. We are nationwide and we're excited to share that at the end of this month we'll be announcing some incredible OEM partnerships that will be very important to you guys as dealers.
Also, Mia has over 35 integrations and this allows us to do our work. Understand this, we started on the sales side with technology that was fully agentic AI with one goal to automate the BDC. We wanted to automate the BDC for sales, for service, and for reception. You're going to hear that a lot today with a lot of the individuals in this room.
But we went a step further. We went from the voice inbound and went to voice outbound. We also went into text and before the end of the year we'll be in chat and in email. All this is so that we can centralize communications for your clients, centralize communications for your stores in a manner that makes your job easier.
I'm going to come back to that point about making your job easier before I finish. Because what we have found after studying this market and honestly helping to create this market is that often times really smart engineers at AI firms can make the jobs of dealers a whole lot difficult and way more difficult than it has to be. And we can actually change that.
So Thuy and I are going to show you a few calls and we're going to talk you through a few calls so that you understand the impact of Mia for your consumer. We're going to show you these calls and let you listen to these calls so that you have a good understanding of what the experience for your consumer is. Which understand this, if it's a bad experience for the consumer it's a bad experience for your brand and undermines your brand. And so we'll dive into this and then afterwards we're going to get into a really good education on how to... how to decide who I'm going to partner with.
So first call: A sweet lady had an issue with her car. It's a common issue and she was looking for an opportunity to get it fixed; she called into the dealer that she does business with and that dealer was Mia that answered the call. If you will play the call Thuy.
Call 1: Inbound Service Appointment
Mia: Thank you Carol. What kind of service do you need for your vehicle?
Customer: Well I have a notice on my dash and it says emergency call coming. I want an appointment to have somebody check it; I don't want to drive it with that message on. I can't get that message off. So...
Mia: I understand the urgency, Carol. To help you best can you please tell me the year, make, and model of your vehicle?
Customer: It's a 2025 Cadillac XT5.
Mia: Got it. Will you be dropping off your XT5 or waiting during the appointment?
Customer: I will be waiting during the appointment.
Mia: One moment. Carol, we have appointments for an engine diagnostic available as soon as Monday May 11th. Would you prefer Monday morning at 8:00 AM or Monday afternoon at 1:30 PM?
Customer: I'll take the 1:30 appointment.
Mia: You're all set for Monday, May 11th at 1:30 PM for your engine diagnostic. Is there anything else I can help you with Carol?
Customer: No, thank you for your help you've been very helpful. Thank you. Bye.
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Scott Traylor: Simple call, simple service appointment. On the back end how this makes your job easier at the office: our op codes are pushed into the appointment, she knows who Carol's been going to for the last year and so she puts that appointment back in the service advisor's name that's been doing business with Carol. Our job is to make your jobs easier.
Also, she's following the capacities like you would want her to. And so we are automating the input of information into your appointment driving business into your service lane on a call by call basis. But just being transparent we've got 3 million of these calls behind us. 3 million of these conversations. This is something that we've truly dialed in.
The future is with outbound. Thuy?
Thuy: Outbound. So Scott mentioned 3 million conversations. About 25% of those conversations on our platform on our system is now outbound conversations. I'm going to play a call here. Um this is a top uh 10 dealer group that we've been launching outbound conversations for and uh this is on the sales side. Outbound. Go ahead Scott.
Call 2: Outbound Sales Follow-Up
Customer: I want to see the availability on a car.
Mia: Of course, which car are you interested in?
Customer: 2025 Subaru Crosstrek Sport.
Mia: One moment, let me see. We have a 2025 Subaru Crosstrek Sport in Crystal White Pearl with around 5,928 miles priced at $28,331. Would you like to schedule a test drive?
Customer: Yes.
Mia: Great. Could I get your first and last name to set up your test drive?
Customer: First name Robert, last name... [beep]
Mia: Thanks Robert. What day and time would you like to come in for your test drive?
Customer: Tomorrow?
Mia: No problem. What time works best for you tomorrow?
Customer: What time do you open tomorrow?
Mia: We open at 9:00 o'clock in the morning tomorrow and close at 9:00 o'clock at night. What time would you like to come in?
Customer: Um I'd like to come in at 9:15.
Mia: 9:15 in the morning tomorrow works perfectly. Just to confirm, you'd like to test drive the 2025 Subaru Crosstrek Sport in Crystal White Pearl tomorrow Friday April 3rd at 9:15 AM. Can I lock that appointment in for you?
Customer: Yes.
Mia: Awesome. You're all set for your test drive of the 2025 Subaru Crosstrek Sport tomorrow at 9:15 in the morning. Is there anything else I can help you with?
Customer: The car is still available?
Mia: Yes, the Subaru Crosstrek Sport is still available. Anything else I can help with?
Customer: That's all, thank you.
Mia: Sounds good. Have a wonderful day Robert. Bye bye.
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Thuy: So the context behind that call was the outbound SMS that went out first to reach the customer. She left a voicemail, ah sorry she left a message and he called the dealership back. And she was able to book that appointment, integrated into that CRM system, pushed right into the activity, not into notes. And we can do this at scale at this point.
Scott Traylor: As Thuy said earlier we designed this system for honestly one of the top five dealer groups in America. And she's doing automatic lead followup, following up with leads that are coming in the CRM, automatically reaching out to individuals and when they call back in now it's inbound. We've said earlier this is something that we... that's proven ground to us. We have 3 million calls behind us but for you the important thing is that we know that 80% of car buyers buy from the person that reaches out to them first. And so that speed to lead is something that's crucial when we are trying to chase down the next car deal.
But also what's crucial for you as I pivot here is just teaching you how to really gauge all these AI's that are out there. So I'm going to give you some quick tips that my CTO at the company designed so you can test out AI.
Tip number one: If you start talking to a demo line, cut it off. Whatever the conversation is start cutting off the AI and see how that AI reacts. You see it's a known issue in AI that if it's cut off the AI makes the human being repeat themselves. Which creates friction, it's a bad experience, you've all experienced that in your lives.
Point number two: Open up a book on your phone or Kindle or something, go to the demo line of the AI that you're trying to gauge, and just read two or three paragraphs, monologue. You see AI has a problem trying to figure out when it's your time to turn to talk or my time to talk. And so if you go down this path you're going to expose a bad experience for your consumer which turns into a bad experience for your brand.
And I'll give you one last thing. They just sent you up. Huh?
Paul: They sent me up. Before I get to you, go ahead and say the last thing.
Scott Traylor: The last thing is to ask your AI provider how much of the work do I have to do. Because a lot of AI providers honestly encourage you to do prompt engineering whereas what we think is the best route, I'm a car guy, I don't know how to do prompt engineering. And so I want AI that's actually going to do the work for me and not create work for me. So those are just some educational tips for everybody.
Paul: Let's hear it for Mia!
Just as a reminder you can put questions in the app um you can do that by going to agenda tapping on the session that we're on right now and just type away. If you could, because this session is all compressed so it's not uh presented by presenter, just put who the question is for just so we can make sense of it afterwards as well because we'll probably get our presenters to answer the questions uh that we can go in.
Here's a question: what happens if vehicle is out on a test drive and not currently at the location? Oh, tricky one.
Scott Traylor: Yeah, it's a tricky one but the truth is AI's got to have a source of truth. The source of truth is going to be like your vAuto, VinSolutions, whatever your inventory management system is.
And so the AI is not going to know, just being transparent, the AI is not going to know if the car is offsite or not. Um and so they'll let you know if the car is sold. And if the car is not sold the AI can speak to that. And honestly if somebody's telling you that they can speak to that I think that's going to be... I don't think that's something that's legit.
Paul: Um where do you see this technology being in 12 months from now?
Scott Traylor: So 12 months from now without giving too much of our internal game up, uh 100% we're going to be more involved in the outbound calls. Following up with leads. As a rule, if there's 10 steps to a sale I say that AI needs to be in step one and two, and nine and ten. That center part needs to be for the human being. And that's not going to change anytime soon.
And so I think that what we can do better in the next 12 months is get more opportunities in front of the human being so that they can actually convert the sales. So again one and two and nine and ten. And there's a lot of things to do in those spaces that are going to create efficiencies and optimize operations. We're going to be in those spaces. So uh lead follow up maybe qualifying a lead, uh chasing leads longer. Um definitely on the AI... on the service side getting deeper into what's going on at the bay as opposed to what's going on up top.
Thuy: As well as the self learning. So she's going to be self learning and remembering every conversation and optimizing herself.
Paul: Last question. Yeah. Um what is the biggest technical hurdle right now to getting to the next step AI across the board in voice AI? What's the technical hurdle?
Scott Traylor: You know, as far as the technical hurdles are I think that one of the biggest hurdles that we have uh deploying AI is getting our dealers to consider any AI agent that they're bringing in the house as a new staff member.
I say this because we've been trained over years of being dealers to think of what we're hiring or what we're buying as a tool. And if we do that then we think we're going to put it on the shelf, plug it in, turn it on, and forget about it. And that's just not the case. You're going to have to coach this technology and work with this technology like you would any other staff member in your building.
So I think that's one of the hurdles that we have to we have to try and figure out uh as a collective group for our dealers. How do we get AI deployed in a manner where it's uh easier for the dealer, less coaching for the dealer. And I think a lot of that's going to be resolved through self learning that we'll be bringing to the market later on this year and early next year.
Paul: Well thank you so much for being a part of this. For the presentation let's hear it for our friends at Mia.
Scott Traylor: Thank you guys.
Thuy: Thank you Paul.